I’ve just returned home (today is Saturday), one day after Southern Illinois suffered a hurricane…I kid you not. We had an inland hurricane.
On Friday morning I was driving up to the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana for my 7th graders State Science Fair. We left Carbondale around 9:00 am. From Carbondale to Champaign it is about 200 miles…about 3 hours. Around 10:30 we received notification that Carbondale had a tornado warning. Torrential rains, strong winds, but little damage from the tornado.
Around 1:30 my cell phone alerted me that once again Jackson County was having a severe thunderstorm warning. I went on my blackberry’s internet to view the radar and it looked just like a hurricane. It had the familiar eye, the wrap around colors and it was heading directly into our county.
One hour later I head that Carbondale, and SIU were seriously damaged by winds up to 108 miles per hour. Everything we heard that day was from second hand source…we were three hours away. We thought about coming back but the state patrol told us that all major routes were closed. Apparently down trees, downed power lines, and tipped over semi-trucks blocked all major routes. So we stayed put. Our neighbors came down to assess our home. We lost about 6 big trees, but not one hit our house. Our shed lost some gutters and shingles but that was it. We were extremely lucky. Those neighbors had a big tree land on their house. Most other neighbors had damage to their homes as well. The street had about 8 MASSIVE trees laying across…while we were resting in the luxury of electricity, warm food, and cold drinks my neighbors were wrestling with no power, no water, and massive damage. Doesn’t quite sound fair, does it.
Most of Saturday morning was agonizing as I helped judge the science fair and had a number of my daughter’s classmates go through the judging process. Most wanted to be home…not sure what would be left. Finally at 12:30 we were able to hit the road. About 2 hours north of Carbondale we stopped and purchased canned food, water, and other essentials. We had heard that nothing was open and when places were opened it was cash only.
We arrived into the Carbondale area around 4:30. Most of the promotional signs (i.e., McDonald’s, Burger King) were down. Many, many trees were just splintered. Hundreds of trees were lying on the power lines. Many buildings had roof damage, one was completely flattened. We pulled into our rural subdivison and the damage really hit home. Trees that were hundreds of years old had been thrown onto our road, but the neighbors toiled the past 24 hours and were able to cut the trees so that the road was passable–barely, but passable. These were huge trees.
Our house had about 10 major trees down (about 6 in the yard and around 4 major ones in our woods). There is probably another dozen or two that were damaaged but the woods is so thick we can’t see. We get the generator going and start running the downstairs refrigerator. Estimates are that power will not be obtained for days (perhaps Wednesday or Thursday of next week). My daughter and I drive into town to see the damage, and to drop off a hand-crank radio to a friend, when half way through our trip my wife calls and says we have power. We’re the ONLY household in the rural subdivison that has power. We’re keeping most lights out…after all we don’t want to rub our neighbors noses in it.
The damage in Carbondale is substantial, but the good news is that most of it are trees and damaged power lines. There were many homes with large trees on their roofs, but from what we say the damage could have been much, much worse.I couldn’t see much more because we were closing in on the curfew that Carbondale set (8:00 pm to 8:00 am). Most of the damage on campus were relatively superficial. Trees, signs, and many windows blown out on the high-rise towers.
Now, the clean up for me starts tomorrow.
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